[citation][nom]JackNaylorPE[/nom]I agree, I was using the Silver Arrow over the DH-14's .....same or better thermals and quieter. But, now I take the Phanteks ... same or better thermals than both. And while thermally, I can't say ya could go wrong with any of the 3, the DH-14 is still fugly and the Phanteks 5 year warranty covers you for the life of the PC while the Noc gives ya just one year..... not to mention the fact that the Phanteks is $10 cheaper than the Noc on newegg.[/citation]
Are you talking about the new Silver Arrow SB-E- the old Silver Arrow did not beat the D-14 in high stress situations (overclock). Same with the Phantek, it is close but it doesn't quite beat the D-14. I think I have read every review of these three coolers. I have heard the the new Silver Arrow SB-E beats the old one but I am not sure if it really bests the D-14. One of the problems with the old Silver Arrow was that the CPU mounts were not flat and this is inherently inefficient. Hopefully they corrected that.
You are right that all three are very close, but in most (the majority) of the professional reviews I have seen the D-14 beats every other air cooler It is a can of worms because some reviewers evidently don't install there test coolers correctly and so test results vary widely - and this is with professional reviewers.
Further some professional reviewers orient the D-14 wrong (and they tell you they are doing this) for some reason I cannot comprehend. By wrong I mean so that the D14 does not exhaust heat out of the case.
My point is that as you go through the reviews you encounter a rat's nest to unravel. Frosty Tech has the most comprehensive list of cooler reviews but their tests simply do not make sense. Their tests in both noise and cooling efficiency come to different conclusions from about every other review and I can't understand why. For example, Frosty Tech lists the noise from the D-14 at 46 Db, no other review lists it as that loud. This review lists the noise of the D-14 at 25 Db. The same goes for cooling.
But as you sift through the dozens of reviews you begin to get a concensus and the D-14 it the best. This review by Toms Hardware illustrates just how good it is because it actually competes head to head with the Corsair H100i which is the most efficient CL prefab cooler you can buy right now - but it is noisier than the D-14.
Tom's review is marred by one problem, the criticism of the weight of the D-14. That it "flexed" the CPU mount on the board in this test is NOT the D-14's fault and I doubt it is a weight problem. IF this WAS a REAL problem with D-14 we would see it in the Newegg and Amazon reviews. The Sandy Bridge D-14 has over 870 reviews on Newegg and funny NOT A SINGLE REVIEW I HAVE READ COMPLAINS ABOUT THE D-14 FLEXING THE CPU MOUNT OR THE MOTHERBOARD. The Tom's reviewer needs to check how he installed the D-14 and also check the mobo to see if it is just too weak. It is possible that the reviewer just had a bad day and overtightened the CPU mount screws (though that would be difficult to do) or that mobo is just to weak because NO PROFESSIONAL REVIEW I HAVE READ reports this problem and I have read dozens of D-14 reviews.
Other than the above problem this review is really first class and well done.
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